


The Thing Inside

by Anonymous



Category: System Shock (Video Games)
Genre: Abortion, Body Horror, Forced Pregnancy, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 11:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15907248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Diego never intended to carry Korenchkin's child. The Many have other plans... for him, and for the thing inside him.





	The Thing Inside

The second time he stays quiet. He is not going to lose command over this.

He does not tell the father because to be honest it is none of Korenchkin’s business. What happened between them was a mistake, and one that will not be repeated.

He stays quiet, hoping that something outside his control will happen. Maybe those damn eggs from Tau Ceti V will have done something to him. Maybe exposure will have rendered this pregnancy non-viable. Maybe what happened the first time will happen again.

He should be so lucky.

Instead of the familiar dead weight and sickness he feels more and more twitchy and more and more enraged. The _Von Braun_ ’s crew barely listens to him, and their shitty behavior is spreading to the _Rickenbacker_ ’s crew. Some kind of disgusting little worms, possibly stragglers from Tau Ceti, have escaped containment. On top of everything else, Bronson, the head of _Von Braun_ security, has started setting up her own little private militia downstairs. He finds a log he apparently sent her saved to his PDA. It starts, “Listen here, you little bitch.” He finds that, among other things, odd. Doesn’t remember sending it. But it’s definitely his voice, and he stands by the sentiment.

But by far the most infuriating thing is when he realizes, fully realizes, what has been done to him. He’s in his quarters, still fuming about those fucking eggs they’d brought aboard, when he finds an empty bottle rattling around in the space below his bed.

Up until now his memory of that night has been spotty. Drinking? Yeah, he’d been drinking. One thing led to another and suddenly he’d been buttoning up his trousers while Korenchkin walked out. It had been a mistake. A stupid, stupid mistake.

Now, though? Now the pieces start clicking together. That booze he’d been drinking? Rough stuff. High enough proof to anaesthetize a horse. Had been planning to go all night, or at least until he passed out, with no intention of leaving his quarters. Hadn’t been expecting to deal with Korenchkin until morning but some kind of squabble went down between TriOps goons and some of his own crewmen and he was called down to the _Von Braun_ conference room. Then there was arguing. Loud arguing and the bright lights of the viewscreen, both hurting his head. Then a scratch in his memory.

Suddenly he was lying on his back on the table and Korenchkin was thrusting in him fitfully. His breath, strained and huffy, was rank in Diego’s nose.

“I’m gonna fuck you to pieces,” Korenchkin grunted. “And when you come apart I’m gonna be right here watching. Anytime I want I’m gonna be able to close my eyes and watch the great William Bedford Diego come for me again and again.”

Internally Diego scoffed. Korenchkin obviously overestimated his own sexual prowess, because nothing he had done nor was doing would turn on anyone. Externally he hooked his fingers over the edge of the table because that was all he could move. The lights were darker now, tinged with purple. Another scratch.

Korenchkin cried out and grabbed at his head. Probably looking to grab hair for leverage, but Diego has been clean-shaven since joining the navy. Instead he slams the heel of his hand into Diego’s forehead. The back of his head struck the table and rebounded. Korenchkin’s sweaty fingers dug into his head and he mashed his lips against Diego’s neck, biting and sucking and driving a bruise deep into the flesh.

Already flushed with alcohol, Diego’s body did react to that. He gasped. His muscles stiffened.

Korenchkin mistook that for something else.

“Go on,” he moaned. “Scream for your daddy. Let him see what a real man can do.”

Another scratch, and Korenchkin made a sound like a sob, his hips bucked erratically, and he came.

“I… I know you’re close,” he stammered. He moved like he was going to keep going, but instead he let out a single overstimulated squeak and quickly pulled out.

And in his quarters Diego smashes the bottle on the floor. His memory wasn’t spotty. He’d been blackout drunk.

The fucker had raped him.

On some level he must have already known that. But that arrogance, the goddamn bizarre way he brought Edward Diego into it, that is a bridge too fucking far. He is going to put a stop to this, and when it is done he is going to put Korenchkin’s head through an airlock.

He schedules the procedure for the very next day. Part of him wants to go down to the _Von Braun_ right now and inflict as much violence on that bastard as he can, but any transport between ships at night is now monitored, something he realizes now must have been Korenchkin’s idea--just one more inconvenience from that night in the conference room. If he’s gonna rain holy hell on Korenchkin he wants plausible deniability. That means waiting until proper visiting hours, when he can come and go at will. So that’s the plan. He’ll be in the infirmary as soon as it opens, get the procedure over with, hang around until open hours, break Korenchkin’s face, and be back in time to meet with Bayliss about those damn disgusting worms again.

He doesn’t sleep. How can he? He’s too fucking infuriated. The rage is what propels him. Rage at Korenchkin. Rage at the thing inside him that means he can’t forget. Rage at himself for letting that bastard do this to him.

He is the first patient to arrive at the infirmary in the morning, and he is greeted by a nervous young clinician who escorts him into the back. Briefly he is able to access some other emotion--pity. Performing an abortion on her commanding officer is probably not what she expected to be doing in a first-contact scenario.

She doesn’t seem to know how much to tell him as she goes through the initial exam, and she errs on the side of telling him nothing. Just as well; he has other things to think about. He pays her no mind until she hands him two white tablets.

“And these are for…” He’s been under the impression that at this point he would need a surgical abortion, not a pill.

The clinician turns red and looks away. “For after. For the cramps.”

Suddenly he is aware just how little he knows about this. It never occurred to him that there would be cramps, or that, apart from the medical intervention, this would be so similar to the first time. He glances up at the clinician. She looks distressed.

“Let me guess,” he says, not a little impatient. “This goes against your beliefs.”

“Not at all.” If anything she looks more worried. “This isn’t the right thing for you right now so you’re going do what needs to be done to make it stop. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.”

He swallows the pills.

She offers to help him lie back on the table, but he does not want her help, does not need her help. He hates this. He shouldn’t have to be here.

The clinician leaves the room and he can hear her out there, arguing with someone. His eyes catch on his belly. Without the shapeless uniform to hide behind, he is visibly pregnant. A wave of full-throated disgust rolls over him. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see.

Out across the hall the clinician says, “Please, you…”

The last time this happened, long before the battle at Boston Harbor, he’d considered this as an option. Maybe he should have gone through with it then. An abortion on his medical record would have been easier to cover up than miscarrying during his first command posting in the _Pierce_ ’s bridge bathroom.

He is remember a little too vividly--being unable to leave because there was blood staining his uniform, waiting in that bathroom until somebody called a medical protocol droid to physically carry him out of there, eventually having to address the crew and then step down--when he recognizes the heavy, sinking feeling.

First confusion, then anger. It’s got to be the pills. He did not consent to be sedated. He tries to sit up and see where the clinician has gone but he’s already too weak to raise his head for long. Goddammit. She can’t do this to him.

He lays there and waits--what else is he going to do?--still angry and now humiliated. When this is over he’ll see to it that she spends the rest of her commission scrubbing latrines on a garbage scow.

He hears footsteps now. She’ll regret this. Korenchkin will regret this. They will learn. He’s not a man to be fucked with.

He waits, holding tight to his anger. She walks alongside him. He looks at her and immediately loses his grip on the feeling.

It’s not the same woman. It can’t be. There hasn’t been enough time for… for…

He’s always prided himself on his ability to move past the horrors of war, but this… he can’t call it a woman… this turns his stomach. She is metal from the waist down, cyborg parts meshing gruesomely with gore around her stomach and back. Her breasts are gone, leaving gaping cavernous wounds instead, and her face--her face is the worst--the skin has been removed, opening flesh and muscle and cartilage to the air.

Where is the clinician, he wonders, but he knows in his heart she is either dead or soon to be in a state worse than death.

In a voice that sounds like it too was stolen, the thing whispers, “Babies must sleep.”

Her bloody hand touches his forehead and he recoils. He can see now. Flesh, growing from the walls. Christ.

“Babies must rest.”

Growing up the sides of the table. Prickling at his own skin. He can’t even force himself to cry out.

“Wise is the one who does not waken them.”

He is barely able to whimper before the flesh swallows him whole, filling his mouth and nose.

He struggles as much as he can. The flesh seems to suck the oxygen from his body. It crushes him down, pressing against his arms and stomach and between his legs again…

Before it can cover his eyes he sees the monster with the cyborg parts reach out. The wall of flesh parts before her and a look of what must be awe crosses what’s left of her face as she touches his belly.

His lungs are now empty. He ceases to struggle. It is as he ceases to live that he understands.

Like a reassuring parent the many whisper that this is a gift. With this gift he may fly.

All he has ever wanted since childhood. They will give him weightlessness if only he allows it. He will be a part of something bigger than himself, if only he allows it.

With the last of his strength he allows it.

 

As the many there is no struggle, not as an individual could have known it. There is only the purpose, the cause. The comfort.

This form changes, and it welcomes the change. Before it was weak. Now it is capable. Its knowledge now effortlessly integrates into the Many, and one by one those who would resist fall.

This form remains unique in that even as the rest of its body is shaped to match the other forms its belly is allowed to expand. The form growing inside it is of interest to the Many.

Before this one, only annelid forms have successfully propagated. The existence of humanoid forms relies solely on the availability of new, unjoined organisms. But now something else grows. This is an inefficient method compared to annelid reproduction; only one new form will be produced, and it must necessarily be cared for by this one specific body. The annelid eggs are interchangeable, as are the midwives who tend them. This one requires rest often and a midwife to watch over it. According to the memories it brings to the Many, this form has never successfully carried a fetus to term before.

By necessity this form maintains a small amount of individuality. It is able to recognize other forms and retains some memory of their own individuality, and can thus direct them in helpful ways. Even beyond the fetus it carries, it is a useful addition.

Soon it is unable to fit into the uniform it seems to prefer. It opens the front of the garment to allow the form inside it room to grow. Under the watchful eyes of the Many, it has grown much faster than a humanoid form could expect.

The bit of individuality seems to cause this form some distress. It still remembers the promise of the Many--that with its cooperation it will be given a stronger form. It is almost anxious to attain a form that is not so constricted by artificial gravity. It longs to become a reaver, but it does accept that, for the good of the Many, it will remain in its hybrid state until it gives birth.

It sends a message to the other, the one whose mind it shared before the Many. Its voice breaks with the strain of becoming.

_I believe the plans the Many have for me are greater than I even imagined. The change is upon me. But the path is even more glorious than we imagined. It does not stop at a mere single mutation_

_the form I’ve been promised is more beautiful than even that_

_they tell me I will float through the air and strike at the foes of our biomass with my mind_

_with our mind_

_my cup runneth over_

The other is touched and so too is the Many. More than any other this form represents the joy of the mass. Life grows within its womb. With every moment it is reinvented.

The other comes to this form, its own transformation nearly complete, a testimony to what this one will become. Reverently it cups its hands around the warmth of this one’s belly.

“We made this together,” it says in awe. It presses what remains of its lips to this form’s abdomen.

William Bedford Diego goes weak with revulsion.

 

As one of the midwives helps him to his quarters he gets a look at himself reflected in a viewscreen. It takes the legs out from under him.

He barely recognizes the man looking back. The man is pale and sunken-eye, displays the same featurelessness as the other hybrids, and his vest hangs open over the swollen belly. He looks nine months pregnant instead of only a few weeks.

The midwife lays him down in his bed. She barely seems aware of the flesh growing from the wall, but she does stop to tend the batch of worms that is born from it.

The voice of the Many whispers in his mind. Part of him longs to give himself back over to the biomass. He has only been outside of the consciousness for a handful of minutes and already he feels weak and cold. His body trembles from the effort of supporting the thing that grows inside him.

On the floor below the midwife tends the young annelids.

“I worry so about my little ones,” she coos. “Little ones need lots of meat to grow big and strong.”

The thing in his belly squirms at the sound of her voice. Its weight and movement are agonizing. He crushes a fist in his mouth to muffle a sob. Whatever this thing is, it is no longer merely human.

His entire life has been predicated on two things--loyalty to the UNN and not repeating the mistakes of his father. He has failed in both. His father was weak, and in his weakness he brought Shodan into existence. Now his own weakness has brought the Many onto his ship.

He has to find a way to undo this.

He rolls to his side and raises himself up on shaking arms. From this position he can just reach his computer screen. He tries to access the security logs, and to his surprise it accepts his code. In fact, what remains of the Xerxes lock-out is patchy at best.

As he struggles to keep himself up he reads. He reads records dating back weeks, all the way back to that first contact on Tau Ceti V. Logs from his direct inferiors, telling how odd they’d found his behavior after the contact on Tau Ceti V. Spelled out like this it is incredibly obvious that something was already wrong. Somehow the Many had already been inside him.

He also reads records from the _Von Braun_ ’s medbay. A soldier had been admitted, allegedly by that Polito woman. The Many had spoken of an intruder. It must be the same person, this soldier G65434-2. Who else is left on this damn station?

And yet as he looks at the data showing that soldier’s progress, it seems too determined. There’s no poking around, none of the observation you’d think would be necessary on a ship crawling with hostile life forms. This intruder goes directly from area to area with minimal backtracking, as if he already knows where to find what he needs. As if someone is guiding him along the way.

In the back of his mind, the Many whisper warnings of the machine mother.

He tries to push those thoughts from his mind. Shodan is gone, purged by the same hacker who freed her more than forty years ago. The only reason for his fear is the creeping voices, and he does not answer to them.

As far as he can tell the soldier is headed toward the _Rickenbacker_ , while the _Von Braun_ seems to be the most concentrated source of the Many’s mass. He must be trying to destroy the ship. It’s the only way to stop this.

His entire body feels heavy, and he props his arms against the screen. He’s done nothing so far and is already panting for breath. He tries to think. There must be some way he can help.

A familiar clanking metal step approaches, and the midwife lays her cold clammy hand on his bare shoulder. His skin crawls beneath her touch.

“Babies need rest,” she tells him.

“Fuck off,” he growls. His head aches. The echo of the Many is tearing him up.

She strikes him across the face, knocking him back against the bed. “Babies need rest.”

For a moment he can only lie there, stunned. The room tilts wildly. The thing in his belly keeps reacting to her voice, wriggling like a worm, making him physically ill. She steps toward him, and he hears the faint clink of metal on glass.

He never cleaned up the bottle he’d broken the night before the Many took him.

He lets her adjust him on the bed and tries to calm his racing pulse and mind. He tries to impress upon her that he is not going to resist.

She strokes a hand over his belly and says to the thing inside him, “You are mine.”

She can have it, he thinks bitterly. Whatever the thing inside him is, they deserve each other.

He waits for her to turn away. His heart is racing, his head throbbing. When she does his hands close around a shard of glass, and he buries it deep into what is left of her brain.

She falls to the floor and he follows. The thing inside him writhes and twists as if it’s going to break through his skin. A punishment for hurting one of his own? He has to wonder.

For a while he crouches there, gasping for breath and pressing his fists into his gut to hold back the pain. The thing inside him is so heavy.

It’s not a punishment, he realizes. It’s far worse than that. He’s being coerced into returning. The Many is showing him how much this is going to hurt without their support.

For the briefest moment it pulls him back in. The warmth of the Many envelopes him. He can feel the presence of the mass, from the annelid worms still writhing around on the floor to the massive reaver fighting the intruder on the _Von Braun_ command deck.

It is the reaver that pushes him back out. Even like this he recognizes the son-of-a-bitch.

Korenchkin.

Not much left of him now. There’s no stopping the changes.

He feels it viscerally--or maybe the thing inside him does--when Korenchkin dies. He understands that no matter what he does he is now part of the Many.

“You are so very alone,” the Many whispers. He starts--do they mean him?

But of course they mean that soldier, the only one among them still fighting.

He forces himself upright. He’s not going to let this happen. Yes, they got Korenchkin, but that bastard was weak.

William Bedford Diego is not weak.

He can’t resist the changes that are happening to him. The thing inside him sees to that. All he can do is start gathering up his supplies. He can’t fight back, but that soldier still can, and Diego will help him as long as he can.

He secures everything he can in his quarters. No sooner has he locked it in does the thing inside lash out.

He goes to his own comfort first. There wasn’t this much pain when he was part of the Many. If he returned…

He grits his teeth through it. He can’t resist this. He physically can’t.

But maybe he can remove it.

He sends a message to that lone soldier. Warns him. Warns him that he’s compromised. Asks him to come to the sickbay. He’d go to the soldier if he could, but it’s impossible at this point.

Wearily he makes his way down to the foredeck. The Many he pass do nothing. They know he can’t hold out like this.

With trembling hands he enters a program into the autodoc and hefts himself onto the table. His entire body is stiff. He can’t stop shaking, and when the autodoc slices him open he screams and screams.

The thing it cuts out of him is not human. He gets a glimpse of it--massive, mangled, still squirming. It should never… he should have…

For an instant he is flooded with panicked regret. The pain is more real than it has ever been. He tries to go back. Let the Many take him, they can force him to carry as many of their fetuses as they want, he’ll do anything as long as it takes away the pain.

He is shown no mercy.

 

He comes to himself still weak, still lying on the autodoc. It has already sewn up his belly. The weight of that thing inside is gone.

Slowly, trying not to strain himself, he lets his gaze sweep across the sickbay. Empty. No one. Nothing but the bloody mass of the thing inside, curled in a heap on the floor as if it had tried to crawl away.

He tries to move onto his side and instantly the pain rips through him again. He muffles his sobs in the bend of his arm. Where the fuck is the soldier?

He manages to lower his legs to the floor but can’t hold himself upright. All he can do is lie there half on and half off the table.

He doesn’t understand why the Many haven’t come. If that thing inside him was so important, then why… what…

Unless the soldier has them on the run.

He doesn’t dare to hope. He tries instead to listen to the whisper of the Many but hears only silence. His connection to them is gone with the thing inside him.

He is weak with relief, and with something more. The autodoc has patched him up and it isn’t quite enough.

He is dying.

A gentle clacking raises his attention--his body goes stiff because if it’s a midwife and she finds what’s left of the thing inside him there’s no way he’s going to be able to defend himself--but he can just make out a spider annelid, approaching slowly. It crosses the sickbay floor and pauses beside the discarded mass.

“Go on,” he mumbles through numbed lips. “Take it. All yours.”

But the spider crawls on.

He slides down onto the floor and bites back half a laugh and half a sob. Of course the Many never really wanted that thing. Of course.

It hurts to breathe, and he’s not sure how much more time he has. Not enough. Wherever the soldier is now, he’s not going to get here before he dies. With the last bit of energy he still has he starts recording another message to the soldier.

The shortness of breath holds him back and he’s only just able to explain. The thing, the worm, whatever it was that had grown inside, was a cancer in his body so he had the autodoc cut it out. He’s left supplies to help in his quarters. The access card is on his body. Take the fight to the Many. Do what has to be done.

Liquid gurgles in the back of his throat and he thinks of the machine mother.

“You’re the only one you can trust,” he whispers, just as his voice finally goes out. He fumbles with the PDA. His fingers feel swollen and useless. There’s nothing else he can do. Right?

Through the encroaching fog he tries to think what else he is capable of doing. He hasn’t done nearly enough. He’s barely done anything. In the end he really is just like his worthless father.

But, and maybe it’s the blood loss making him dizzy, he can’t quite make the parallels. His father died at the hands of the hacker, trying to save his own skin. William is choosing to die. He is going out on his own terms.

It feels freeing, as if he is floating.

No. He is falling.

He opens his eyes and through the haze he sees the ceiling growing closer. The artificial gravity. Something has gone wrong. Something…

Someone. Someone has reset the gravity.

He tries to smile to himself as he watches death coming for him. From this point of view, who knows? Maybe instead of falling, he’s flying after all, just like he always wanted.


End file.
